How to Start a Career in Ecommerce Part 6 Google AdWords

In parts 4 and 5 of this installment, we covered how one without any work experience could contact their favorite non-profit and conduct some email marketing and social marketing for them to gain experience.  The non-profit would likely need, and would very much appreciate the help, and the worker would gain real-world knowledge on a valuable skill.

Now comes the time to extend that relationship, and move it to help you learn paid search.  And for paid search, the best and easiest place to learn is via Google's tool, AdWords.

AdWords is the interface that allows users to "bid" on specific search keywords so that ads can appear when an appropriate keyword string is entered by a user.  It can be incredibly sophisticated, but absolutely does not need to be in order to be effective.  In fact, it can be very simple to use, and one can get started on rudimentary campaigns in a matter of an hour or two.   Like most things with Google, the interface is intuitive, and the avenues for help are many.

Concerned that your non-profit doesn't have the money to support a paid search budget?  No worries!  Google, through their Google Grants program.  Google Grants is a program in which Google makes available a monthly paid search budget of $10,000 for eligible non-profit organizations.  Applying for support is easy, and approval very quick.

So an account has been established via AdWords, and a budget has been established via Google Grants.  Now is time to start building some ads and driving traffic to your non-profit's website.

The first thing to do will be do design the ad itself.  Focus should be on creating a message that will be compelling enough to encourage a click.  And, again, Google makes it really easy to optimize these by allowing you to run different ads simultaneously and see which are more successful in generating clicks.  All pretty much in real time.

Once a portfolio of compelling ads has been developed, then focus will be needed on which keywords should receiving bidding, and in what format.  The most important of these components relates to match types, which is best explained in this video:



Once the keywords and match types have been set up, there is a whole host of additional focus that can be applied.  Examples include:

• Limiting your ads to being shown to users in a specific geographic location
• Changing "position" of your ad based on bid
• Having your ads turn on or off at certain hours of the day
• Using "ad extensions" to drive traffic to specific pages in your non-profit's website
• And more!

The sky is really the limit in terms of how sophisticated you want to get - the tools that Google makes available are very powerful.  But they're also intuitive, and easy to use.  Hence, get in there, start testing things, and see what you can do to drive traffic to your non-profit.  It's easy, it's effective, it's free, and it is fantastic experience for one looking to build a career in ecommerce.

Good luck!